While I like to think lately "I'm too busy for that stuff," somewhere inside me lives a mystical medieval warrior ready to explore, say, Dungeons to defeat the, I don't know, Dragons... that live there. And his ears perk up every time there's an interview, documentary, or panel discussion with big names in the industry like SimCity creator Will Wright.
During my best (worst?) years of nerdship, I was an avid Starcraft player. One high school spring break, I actually played Starcraft online for over 24 hours! Apparently I'm not the only one; in South Korea there's an entire electronic gaming league. They call it e-sports, and fans pay money to sit in a stadium to cheer on their favorite Starcraft player, watching them battle an opponent on big screens. The best players make a living doing this, and they practice (led by a coach) for 8, 10, 12 hours a day. Teams are often sponsored by corporate advertisers, and announcers give the play-by-play. Here's perhaps the most famous battle from one of the original e-sports champions, dubbed "Boxer".
That's our common ground for the week: gamers and athletes. Both can be extremely competitive, social, and mentally active. Long gone are the days of gaming reserved to gloomy arcades filled with greasy, dateless males. On a fun side note, recent research shows that the current fad of "social gaming" (think Facebook, a la Farmville) is dominated by females!
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